Old MGs Always Had a Backup Plan: The Hand Crank

A nice thing about having a small collection of old cars is the chance to actually drive them once in a while. This may sound like a strange assertion, but many of us have cars that mostly sit, and their mere presence in our world gives us enough happiness to justify ownership. I have some cars that are placeholders: They keep me from buying another one. I have a 1960 Austin-Healey Bugeye Sprite disassembled in a barn and years away from being a “car,” but it keeps me from buying any more Sprites, such as those that come up online for sale for what appear to be very reasonable prices. As much as I want to, I can’t buy those Sprites, because I already have a (non-running basket-case in the literal meaning of the term) Sprite in my possession. A placeholder.

Abigail, my ’52 MG TD, is different. She joined my fleet a few years ago. I take her out once every two weeks or so for some delightful strolls. Those of you who have ever driven a T-series MG will relate to that term, “stroll,” since these cars, with their blistering 54 horsepower, are hardly able to jog, simply cannot gallop, and so are most often relegated “strolls” around our respective towns. Cars of this era are anachronisms, more suited to local excursions than cross-country trips. Driving Abigail on the highway is like being on the freeway at 65 mph on a bicycle, except that the bike would have better brakes.

One recent December evening an errand to the local drugstore had me playing Russian Roulette in my driveway, deciding on which non-daily-driver to take, offset by the likelihood that one would start. It had been a while since I had driven the TD, so off its cover went and we prepared Abigail for a short errand. “Prepare” is also a term familiar to old MG owners, in that you don’t just get in these cars and go—some pre-flight work is needed. Key-on showed a glowing generator light, so we were off to a positive start (pun intended). Pulling out the choke lever gave satisfactory resistance, so things seemed to be connected under the hood as they should be. Pulling the starter knob gave some slow cranking, and a no-start condition arose quickly as the battery lost its current-dumping capability (Chekov’s gun noted here). I chalked it up to it having sat for a while and pulled out my trusty battery charger. A few minutes on 10 amps gave me enough juice to get Abigail started, and we were off.

The drugstore is only a mile away, an easy trip, but the worst thing you can do to a car is to cold-start it and drive it a short distance. One of the byproducts of combustion is water, and cold-starts dump a lot of this water into the exhaust system and crankcase in the form of piston blowby. A longer trip is better, allowing heat to boil off any water in the exhaust and/or crankcase. The exhaust corrosion issue is ameliorated by modern stainless steel systems (which Abigal is not adorned with) and the blowby is certainly high in my 72-year-old engine with unknown piston-ring quality. So, to be kind, I drove around the neighborhood briskly for 10 minutes or so before meandering to the pharmacy, arriving just before closing time. A somewhat laborious 10 minutes later, I was back in the MG and ready to restart my wandering on this cold evening. Key on, pull starter knob and … just a harrumph of the starter but no rotation. The engine and the battery were warm by this time, so I expected better results. A few tries at cranking only depleted what few electrons there were left to engage, and we were dead.

The usual ballet ensued. Raise the left side hood. Wiggle the battery terminals. Retry starting. No luck. The generator light would illuminate, and the fuel pump would clatter away behind me as I sat in the driver’s seat and repeated my optimistic attempts, but each time the system got weaker and weaker. Cleaning the terminals with sandpaper did not help (you do carry sandpaper in your classic car, don’t you?). We’ve all been here at one time or another. There was only enough voltage left to push current to the fuel pump and hopefully the points and coil, but the 100-or-so amps needed for the starter were absent.

In a moment of foresight, being a seasoned Brit car owner, I had parked on a slight incline with the nose facing downhill, for just such an emergency (not even my 100^th rodeo in this field). So, the backup plan was put in motion: Key on, listen for the fuel pump clatter, declutch and put the car in second gear, release the parking brake and lean forward in anticipation of gravity-induced forward motion. Abigail rolled one foot down the slight slope and … stopped.

The expected acceleration to a walking pace did not happen. Why? Because MG’s engineers spec’d 18 psi for all four tires as a way to create the first line of defense in road roughness. Soft tires meant you needed less of a suspension in 1932, when this design rule was created. Sadly, soft tires have very high rolling resistance, and I had empirical evidence of that fact on this evening.

I sat for a few minutes and finally had to admit defeat. There were no Good Samaritans nearby to ask for a little push, and the TD’s suicide doors make pushing the car oneself a comedic exercise. I tried pushing with one foot out the door, like a one-legged Fred Flintstone, but it was not useful.  It was getting late, and cold. I was going to need a battery jump. Begrudgingly, I gave up and called my neighbor.

“Hi Jimmy,” I said when he answered his cell phone. “I need a jump. Could you pop over and bring jumper cables?” I was, after all, only a mile from my house and/or his, and he’s a great neighbor.

“Um,” he replied. “I’ve already begun my evening drinking, and that would not be a good idea.” Kudos to James for knowing he was in no shape to drive, but this was an unanticipated glitch in my grand plan. “My wife is on her way home and has cables in her car,” he lit up with a solution. “I’ll call her and text you back.” Said text came in a few minutes saying she was about a quarter-hour away. I thanked him and sat back staring at my lovely dashboard in the moonlight, resigned to the shame of not being able to solve my own problems…

Then, like a small glowing ember in the ashes of my memory came a great realization: I have a hand crank.

As preposterous as it sounds, this was in fact true. TDs came from the factory with a hand crank, with a nice little hole in the front bumper and a well-designed hub on the crankshaft’s nose that received the crank’s long end. Emboldened by my realization, I felt behind my bench seat in the dark and found the factory crank in its factory clips, just waiting to be helpful. And, as ridiculous as this exercise felt, while Starlink satellites zoomed overhead, I proceeded to start my engine. By hand.

I fed the crank through the provided holes and blindly felt for the receiver on the end of the crankshaft. It took a few jabs and some hunting, but I eventually sensed some slight engagement. I turned the crank clockwise to engage the pins against the crankshaft hub’s notches and slowly rotated the crank handle to where it was on a horizontal plane and ready for a downward push. One key tip that I had learned 50 years ago is that you never grab a crank handle with your whole hand; there is a trick where you keep your thumb beside your index finger as you crank, essentially palming the crank’s handle. If you forget to do this, and if your first crank results in a solid bit of combustion at the wrong time, the crank handle will be thrust mightily backwards into your hand with brute force. This typically results in either a dislocated thumb or a broken thumb, which prevents you (despite your pain tolerance) from initiating a second crank attempt, which means you will still be stuck, only now in immense pain.

With my thumb in the correct position, I pushed down against one piston’s compression as hard and as fast as I could. There was rotation, then silence, then a loud huff, and just like that, my engine was running. It only took one try. Thank you, MG engineers, now long passed, for providing backup to a marginal charging system or a neglected battery. And for the 7:1 compression ratio …

I threw the crank behind the seat, climbed in and took off. After a few hundred feet, I turned on the headlights while wincing, but nothing untoward happened. Lights came on, ammeter showed charging, and Abigail was as happy as a clam. I sped down the local road, literally energized by my efforts, and all was forgiven.

The next day I bought a 750-cold-cranking-amp battery, enough to arc-weld Abigail’s pistons into place and ensure that I will won’t need to hand-crank my MG for a few years. However, it is such a fun parlor trick, I’m sure I’ll have to do it just for show at least once in front of my buddies.

Automotive charm comes in a lot of packages. A hand crank is one of the best …

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Norman Garrett was the Concept Engineer for the original Miata back in his days at Mazda’s Southern California Design Studio. When he’s not curating his small collection of dysfunctional automobiles and motorcycles, he teaches automotive engineering classes at UNC Charlotte’s Motorsports Engineering Department, in Charlotte, North Carolina.